Has anyone thought of going back to India or Pakistan for good. Here’s is one Indians experience.
The shattering experience of an NRI patriot
By: Ajit Saldanha
November 29,2001
Mid pleasures or palaces though we may roam, be it ever so humble there’s no place like home. Unfortunately real life seldom works out quite so poetically, as a Non-Resident Indian (NRI) friend of mine discovered when he decided to relocate to India after a lengthy stint abroad.
Pheno Menon, viewing the motherland through the romantic prism of a 15-year absence, felt the faint stirrings of patriotism and responded to the bugle call of an Information Technology (IT) major. He decided that the time was ripe to come back and to take up an assignment as the CEO of one of the top IT firms in the country.
“Into that heaven of cyber freedom, my father, let my country awake,” may well have been the words on his lips as his plane touched down at Sahar. Then he woke up and smelt the coffee and it wasn’t Starbucks. He and his wife seemed to have more than their fair share of teething troubles what with deadlines ignored, plumbing and electrical problems left unresolved. Basically, they were finding it hard to cope with the numerous daily struggles that are part and parcel of daily life in any bustling Indian metropolis.
In the West, for the most part the average citizen is relatively insulated from the slings and arrows of bureaucratic ineptitude. Unlike in Russia (or apna Bharat mahan) where, as Le Carre so pithily observed, ‘When things work one is pathetically grateful. When they don’t, it’s life, comrade.’
Today Menon is a bitter, disillusioned man, saddened by his ‘coming home’ experience and waiting anxiously for next summer when he will wing his way back to the promised land, where people for the most part, ‘keep their promises.’
In the beginning it was the minor irritants that got him down in the dumps: doublespeak, lack of punctuality, beggars, heat, dirt and mosquitoes. What did he expect? “These grumbles are par for the course for a displaced ABCD”, was the cynical observation of some of his counterparts. The final, proverbial back-busting straw was a robbery at his plush apartment complex.
His own apartment was spared; it was his neighbour’s apartment that was ransacked in a manner befitting a vengeful Northern Alliance platoon in Kunduz. “Damned sad, yaar,” or “There, but for the grace of God, go I,” could well have been his philosophic reaction, rather like the passenger who was bumped off the ill-fated American Airlines flight. Unfortunately his troubles were just beginning.
The neighbour, let’s call him Advani, turned out to be that quintessentially desi phenomenon: a rich businessman with connections. Menon was away on a business trip, but that didn’t deter the neighbour and his friends in khaki. They entered Menon’s apartment, took his servants into custody without a warrant or even a by your leave. They ransacked his cupboards, subjected the servants to the third degree and finally, ran their filthy paws over his wife’s silky drawers inspired by the hope that the stolen goods may have been concealed beneath Milady’s lingerie.
Menon was justifiably furious. As a fine, upstanding citizen of the ‘greatest nation on earth’ where even lowlife drug dealers, pimps and other assorted sickos have read their rights before interrogation and arrest, he was livid to discover that such shortcut methods to justice are a matter of routine back home.
Advani was a little taken aback by Menon’s ire, “Yaar, you were out of station and they didn’t really maro them too much: just a couple of thappads. Dekko boss, my wife’s whole jewellery was stolen, so I should be the one who’s shouting, yaar. Your flat ko kuch nahin hua. Here, first thing we suspect is inside job from these bloody servants. What to tell you? Even my own servants were taken to the station and questioned by the cops, yaar. Cool down.”
As you can well imagine, Menon was by now apoplectic with rage, since his domestics had been with his family for over 30 years, were considered family and of unimpeachable integrity. As he cuttingly told Advani, “You #&*ing #$*uth, (NRI’s love to swear in two languages) this guy has brought me back a $100 bill when I threw my pants to the wash and you suspect him of being a thief. By whose right did you enter my house in my absence, you piece of $#it?”
Menon went down to the cop station, dropped a few important names, let off a bit of steam and went back home, sadder and wiser for the experience. Human rights, dignity of the underprivileged, respect for the domestic worker and sundry other concerns don’t appear to cut much ice with the Advanis of this world.